Brutal AI

[Gazebo]

This is the first time in this subforum that someone, anyone, refers to me as "polite".

Now THAT must be a bug.

I was trying to replicate the behavior, at least to some extent, by playing the Babylonians myself, but now G came up with a new version and I am torn apart... do I continue this wonderful game I had with 1.7.7, or do I play with the new toy?

Curse you foul demon G, as notque likes to say.

EDIT: there is a note in the new 1.7.15 version about some bonuses for the AI when conquering cities that were "snowballing", but did not ask G about the meaning... was that perhaps some "pseudo-confession" about this issue? I don't want to ask him, enjoying my sure-to-be-very-temporary "polite" reputation here and now...

No confession needed. Difficulty bonus curve should be the same in 99% of cases. City conquest was already fairly potent, so I decided to move the bonus from that to 'victory in war' as a larger, single boost (instead of smaller boosts via conquest). Same outcome.

G

 

[tu_79]

Por nada, hermano! (literalmente, no veo ningun halago de mi parte que agradecer..)

It was just a pinch of humour. I am the only one that has said something good about you, so I considered it a compliment to myself

 

[tu_79]

No confession needed. Difficulty bonus curve should be the same in 99% of cases. City conquest was already fairly potent, so I decided to move the bonus from that to 'victory in war' as a larger, single boost (instead of smaller boosts via conquest). Same outcome.

G

And more efficient in machine resources, I presume.

 

[Aristos]

It was just a pinch of humour. I am the only one that has said something good about you, so I considered it a compliment to myself

Yeah, I know... Candor dat Viribus Alas, but it makes most people shiver.

That in itself deserves a friendship request (sending).

 

[tu_79]

Yeah, I know... Candor dat Viribus Alas, but it makes most people shiver.

That in itself deserves a friendship request (sending).

You made me use the translator, I actually never studied latin, although 'candor' and 'alas' should have been evident.

 

[Aristos]

You made me use the translator, I actually never studied latin, although 'candor' and 'alas' should have been evident.

Viribus too... viribus ~> virilidad

Candor is harder, we use it closer to "naïve" or "candid" when in fact its root refers to franqueza or sinceridad.

 

[Growth]

EXACTLY. But if me or anyone else, just one person, can do something similar with the babs, then it's not and we have Skynet.

I'd pay actual cold hard cash to have Skynet play AI in Civ or anything similar to a deep learning algo similar to AlphaGo that beat Lee Sedol. I dream of a future CIV game in which you pay a small subscription to play against an AI in the cloud. I mean imagine for a second if they trained a deep learning AI on Civ instead of Atari games. We're getting closer every day.

 

[Aristos]

I'd pay actual cold hard cash to have Skynet play AI in Civ or anything similar to a deep learning algo similar to AlphaGo that beat Lee Sedol. I dream of a future CIV game in which you pay a small subscription to play against an AI in the cloud. I mean imagine for a second if they trained a deep learning AI on Civ instead of Atari games. We're getting closer every day.

Count me in. I would also pay for something like that.

Although G&I are achieving something close to that here...

 

[Gazebo]

Yeah, I know... Candor dat Viribus Alas, but it makes most people shiver.

That in itself deserves a friendship request (sending).

Dat viribus tho...

G

 

[Aristos]

Dat viribus tho...

G

 

[glider1]

Friend, what are your favorite game settings to exploit experience this "brutal AI" these days Mr Aristos? Are you still on ICS=4 and fractal?

 

[Aristos]

Friend, what are your favorite game settings to exploit experience this "brutal AI" these days Mr Aristos? Are you still on ICS=4 and fractal?

Long time no see Aussie

Fractal all the time, no map can even get close to fractal in fun factor. I'm using default MCR these days, AI does not need more maneuver room anymore.

Exploit this AI? It's more like this AI is trying to exploit me.

 

[CypressC]

Nevermind

 

[De_Genius]

In the latest patches I have noticed that an AI left alone have a very strong tendency to snowball wildly out of control.
I played my last game back in May and I held my own on Immortal.
Now I first downloaded the 1-7 version and later the 7-7, and both games have seen the same pattern.

In my first game I saw Poland get stuck on a continent all by himself, and he went completely bananas spamming cities left and right. This did not seem to slow him down at all, and it was not long before I saw him have twice my score and 4-5x the other civs. I unfortunately was isolated from him, so I could not react quick enough, and when I finally gave up the game in turn 631 I was in the renaissance era and he had entered the modern era.

Then I started a second game. I fell behind in tech at some point, since I aggressively pursued more cities and had happiness problems, so my surrounding civs were around 4-5 techs ahead of me which is manageable and reasonable. Then I met the Iroquois and I had an immediate flashback. He had almost 3 times my score and was 10 techs ahead. Now in turn 637 I am in renaissance again, and some civ had just entered the industrial era, and the Iroquois have just picked his ideology and entered the atomic era... in the year 1484. The other civs have between 35 and 40 techs, and he has 53.

I like strong AIs which can provide resistance with the ridiculous bonuses of vanilla Civ5, but I do not understand how he could expand so quickly and sustain such a massive lead.

I am (always) playing on Marathon, Continents and Huge. I usually reduce the number of civs to 9-10 compared to the suggested 12, because I like having some nice room for peaceful expansion. I have disabled tech brokering and research agreements.

Is this normal behaviour for the AI to snowball heavily when left uncontested ? Because I have no idea how he was able to keep his happiness so high while expanding so much, since I could not keep up the pace at all.

 

[Freaky Freddy]

Is this normal behaviour for the AI to snowball heavily when left uncontested ? Because I have no idea how he was able to keep his happiness so high while expanding so much, since I could not keep up the pace at all.

Were you personally managing each of your cities? I noticed that the game does a poor job at managing your cities when it comes to happiness. It will prioritize food, making your cities grow to fast and not able to keep up in terms of building production. Also remember to build lots of villages, they're really important at supplying gold to reduce poverty (and a bit of culture), even if they're not on top of roads they are still worth it.

As long as your cities aren't starving just try to focus your citizens on specialists, working gold/science/culture hexes and lastly production. If you give them too much food they will grow too fast and you won't be able to keep up with the hit in happiness.

 

[De_Genius]

Were you personally managing each of your cities? I noticed that the game does a poor job at managing your cities when it comes to happiness. It will prioritize food, making your cities grow to fast and not able to keep up in terms of building production. Also remember to build lots of villages, they're really important at supplying gold to reduce poverty (and a bit of culture), even if they're not on top of roads they are still worth it.

As long as your cities aren't starving just try to focus your citizens on specialists, working gold/science/culture hexes and lastly production. If you give them too much food they will grow too fast and you won't be able to keep up with the hit in happiness.

I always manage the cities myself and build plenty of villages. I think my problem when I hit negative happiness was that I built two new cities because I wanted to deny the AI the space.
I have just never noticed in any of previous (5?) CBO games that the AI have snowballed this hard.

 

[wobuffet]

@De_Genius: Agreed, the AI is a lot more capable and intimidating now. I think that's a good thing though.

I enjoy that moment when I discover a runaway Civ on the other continent: it's like getting your first look at the final boss of a game, so you can begin to gear up and prepare to take it down (whether militarily, culturally, or diplomatically).

 

[Forsti]

@De_Genius: Agreed, the AI is a lot more capable and intimidating now. I think that's a good thing though.

When the AI gets 28 techs in 32 turns (which could also be plotted as 26 techs in 28 turns or even 21 techs in 21 turns) it's not being more capable than before. The AI is most likely just getting some massive instant yields of science for some reason, which allows it to advance 3 eras in 30 turns on emperor difficulty. Either that or it's tech costs are just significantly smaller than that of human player's. It sure is intimidating that your opponent might just skip three eras without any visible cause but it isn't a good thing at all considering that you'd struggle to get even half the number of techs in the same time even if you focused purely on science. Good luck trying to achieve a science victory, while a tech lead can turn into being 1.5 eras behind the leader in 30 turns even if you do everything you can to stay in the lead.

I enjoy that moment when I discover a runaway Civ on the other continent: it's like getting your first look at the final boss of a game, so you can begin to gear up and prepare to take it down (whether militarily, culturally, or diplomatically).

Good luck attacking with cruisers while your opponent has planes and atomic bombs.

 

[Morgawr]

Just a wild guess but any chance this is related to the Centaurs Corp science but that is being fixed in next version? It gives the corp founder up to 130% science bonus in ALL cities so their science would more than double.

 

[Forsti]

Just a wild guess but any chance this is related to the Centaurs Corp science but that is being fixed in next version? It gives the corp founder up to 130% science bonus in ALL cities so their science would more than double.

Even if you rush the corporations tech, you can only get it as your 49th tech. After that you still need to build the headquarters and the offices. The Babylonia's the peak started as they got their 39th tech and stopped at the 66th tech. Centaurus corporation may have affected Babylonia, but it can't have been the main part of the peak, since they had already started to gain technologies in a tech/turn pace before the access to corporations. Aristos might be able to confirm, whether Babylonia actually had Centaurus corp.